The dilution would seem worse than it is to someone who...

The dilution would seem worse than it is to someone who isn't aware of how many shares it actually floated at it's IPO relative to say Afterpay. They've simply always had more shares out there.

It's irrelevant though anyway because dilution is measured against the cap raise to market cap ratio. Not the amount of shares around. Zip's raise is almost exactly equal to the raise / market cap ratio that the $1.5B notes Afterpay did earlier in the year.

The company needed money. Afterpay had it's version of cash injection by way of Tencent $300M investment last year. Zip being about a years growth behind Afterpay means that it needed it's own $300M now. So it was either investor or a raise.